Review of a Review

Alastair Macaulay on Embedded at the Riverside Studios, FT 11 Sep 2004

As I know from reading him in the FT magazine, Macaulay shares the anti-Iraq war view that has become more or less the orthodoxy, though not generally in the FT mag, and here he says 'Since I bear no love for Bush and company...'

The review is inadvertently revealing. 'You can't help wanting Tim Robbin's  Embedded to be better than it is.' He expresses this idea 3 times. One character 'seems funny in retrospect - even though it's virtually impossible to laugh at him in the theatre.'

So, he's honest enough to admit that the play is not very good. What he doesn't want to see is that the play is bad, not because of any technical failings, but because its whole argument is superficial.